About This Project

When hummingbirds hover they generate heat that must be lost to avoid overheating. At high temperatures, heat is eliminated is by evaporation. Previous work suggests that during hovering plumage might restrict evaporative heat loss. We will use a novel method to measure total evaporation in free-living hummingbirds. This work is important because hummingbirds are key pollinators that need to be active even at high temperature.